Facing jail, the civil servant who leaked Bush-Blair secrets

A civil servant who leaked a top-secret record of conversations between Tony Blair and George Bush is facing jail.

David Keogh, a telecoms expert, leaked a memo containing an "extremely sensitive" transcript of talks between the two leaders.

Scroll down for more

Civil servant David Keogh has been found guilty of breaching the Official Secrets Act after he leaked an 'extremely sensitive' memo detailing talks on Iraq between George Bush and Tony Blair

The document's contents are shrouded in secrecy and, in the buildup to the trial, newspapers were threatened with prosecution for even referring to it.

But the Daily Mail has already reported that an "explosive memo" included a transcript of a conversation in which the U.S. President proposed bombing the head office of the Arabic TV channel al-Jazeera.

Mr Blair is said to have argued against the plan.

Only scant information about the memo's contents emerged during the three-week trial at the Old Bailey.

But the jury heard that Keogh leaked the four-page document because he believed it exposed Mr Bush as a "madman".

Keogh and his friend Leo O'Connor, who helped him leak the memo, were found guilty of breaching the Official Secrets Act. The offence carries a two-year maximum sentence.

The events leading to the trial began when Keogh, 50, was working alone in the Government's high-security Cabinet Office Communications Centre and a document rolled out of the fax machine marked "secret" and "personal".

It detailed talks on the war in Iraq between Mr Blair and Mr Bush and some of their most senior advisers in Washington in April 2004.

Among the limited detail that was made public was the line: "This letter is extremely sensitive. It must not be copied further. It must only be seen by those with a real need to know."

Keogh was so shocked by the contents of the document that he wanted it to be raised in the House of Commons and passed on to U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry.

He gave the document to O'Connor, 44 - a researcher for anti-war MP Anthony Clarke - who placed the memo in the MP's paperwork.

But their plans were foiled when Mr Clarke handed the document over to Downing Street.

Keogh, a civil servant since 1979, had met O'Connor at a dining club in Northampton, of which Mr Clarke was also a member.

He first showed O'Connor a copy of the document over a drink at the town's Labour Club. Later the two men copied the fax.

The original was put back in the in-tray at Whitehall and O'Connor kept the copy.

Keogh said he thought O'Connor would have the contacts to get maximum publicity and that far from damaging British troops, the document would simply embarrass Bush.

By contrast O'Connor had claimed to have been terrified, and wanted to get it back to its original home.

His method was to conceal the documents in Mr Clarke's papers and later to tell police he hadn't "got a scooby" how it had got there.

Police questioned Mr Clarke and former Labour defence minister Peter Kilfoyle under caution, but decided to take no further action.

Mr Kilfoyle, who was told about the memo's contents, said he believed it should be published and its banning is to do with "political embarrassment" rather than national security.